Church Planting in Patronage Cultures

Robert Oh

• Publisher: Regnum
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781913363345
• eBook ISBN: 9781913363352
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Patronage governs most relationships in Global South cultures. This book shows that when a patron plays a role as a father, he plays a significant role in developing national pastors as church planters and offers an alternative reading of aid dependency as a relational concept rather than an economic one.

Ted and the Cambodian Bible College

The Cambodian Bible College was established in Phnom Penh in 1998 and went through three distinct phases during its development. The roles that Ted, the director, and the CBC pastors played changed at each stage, which are described below. I observed this development during eight years of research with them.

Ted’s background is that he came to Cambodia from Korea after an elder in his church told Ted that he had experienced a dream in which he heard the Holy Spirit say, “Can you (Ted) be their father in my place?” So, Ted sold his medical clinic, against his family’s wish, and came to Cambodia in search of a ministry opportunity.

Traditionally Southeast Asian patrons operate with personally controlled local resources. However, for the CBC, Ted relied entirely on resources outside of Cambodia, from Korea and Singapore. His relationship to his patrons in Singapore and Korea were personal, so he was given freedom to choose the goals and objectives for the CBC church-planting projects, apart from the major decisions like church buildings and church names.

In writing about his work in the Cambodian Bible College, Ted states that he sees himself as a client to his primary patron, while at the same time being aware that he is playing the role of patron to Cambodian pastors.

However, he does not see this hierarchical relationship in entirely negative terms, and he openly expresses his gratitude to a church in Singapore for being his patron and commissioning a Korean like him to Cambodia. He contrasts this to Korean churches who would not commission a Singaporean as a missionary to Cambodia. He also adds that when the Singapore delegation visited Cambodia to see Ted’s work, they concluded that it should start as a mercy ministry as quickly as possible. The delegation began sending him containers full of clothing and household items, including ten containers full of mercy goods in his first three years in Cambodia. His time at CBC can be broken down into three stages which I observed during my eight years of study – the mission house stage, the early stage and the established stage.

Mission-House Stage (1998-2002)

During the mission-house stage, Ted and his wife lived with seven young Cambodian boys in their flat in a Christian communal lifestyle. No formal classes were given at this stage, teacher and student roles were not defined, and the early CBC stage students regarded Ted as their spiritual father.

The Cambodian pastors who joined Ted’s ‘mission house’ were young; most of them were in their late teens and early 20s. A few of them had run away from their homes, and many of them did not have families to go back to and became very loyal to Ted.

The mission-house was home for the CBC students – everyone in it became a family. The CBC students, who came predominantly from peasant villages, put a high value on the mutual bond of relationships in the everyday life at the CBC. They possessed a sense of collectivism, and the group worked for the good of the CBC.

In Cambodia there is an expectation that one should protect the interests of the family or the group – as a Khmer proverb points out, ‘Don’t throw away the meat and keep the bone’, which best describes the strong kinship in Khmer society. In this proverb, ‘meat’ refers to a family member or a friend, while ‘bone’ implies those who do not belong to a family or group. In the larger context, ‘meat’ refers to Cambodians while ‘bone’ implies foreigners. The students saw Ted in this light, protecting the interests of the family group.

During this time the mission-house stage students relocated to a mountain site, where a school building and a dormitory were built. There they played the role of older siblings to new students joining the CBC. The number of students was below 100, and a sense of mission-house family spirit was still in the air during this stage. Students began inviting their friends, primarily for recruitment, to the CBC. For some, the primary goal of coming to the CBC changed from learning English to becoming a church planter.

Also during this stage another factor was Ted’s belief in the impending coming of Jesus, leading to the desire to plant as many visible churches as possible. He wanted to build churches preferably by main roads so that people could see a cross as people entered the village. Although he did not quote the exact date, he held on to the imminent return of Jesus within a decade. Therefore, all the church buildings were built of wood, designed to last around 10 years and the speed in which the first seven churches were built around Kampot area demonstrated that urgency.

Early CBC Stage (2003-2007)

During the early CBC stage, the CBC building and dormitory were constructed. Most of the mission-house students moved into the dormitory. At this stage, Ted’s role as teacher and pastor seemed to stand out. Finally, when the CBC student body reached more than 100, it entered its third stage, the established CBC stage, 2008-2015.

After ten years, the wooden structure churches began to deteriorate and Ted had to remodel most of them with concrete. His initial belief in the immanent return of Christ had been modified. Furthermore, by this time the CBC had been formalised as a Bible school with a government-issued licence, and more teachers from other countries came to teach at the CBC.

Established CBC Stage (2008-2015)

Once CBC was founded as a formal school and entered an established stage, Ted’s role as a father transitioned into that of a sponsor, who provided funds for church-planting pastors and strove to find positions in Non Government organisations for CBC graduates.

By 2015, many students had became pastors, reaching their mid-30s and early 40s. They had been in church-planting for several years and had their own families. They needed continuous support for their ministries and their families. In addition, they required church buildings since their ministries were becoming established and were growing. The pastors needed scooters for their pastoral work, and support for their children’s higher education, preferring private education since the quality of Cambodian public education was sub-standard.

In the early days Ted distributed goods from village to village. Out of this abundance, the ministry of the mission-house and subsequent CBC ministries were launched. Initially it was a successful mode of conducting mercy ministry. Once churches were built, however, the CBC pastors could not duplicate such a pattern of distributing goods using only local resources.

Eventually the Singaporean patrons cut the funding to CBC, claiming that the CBC had not become independent after 10 years of their support. The real hold up was that Ted refused to become a Cambodian citizen and take over the CBC properties under his name. Ted’s Singaporean patrons also had another mission project in the same city and here the leader of that mission project followed his patron’s instruction and became a Cambodian citizen, so in that situation their support continued. Moreover, Ted claimed that the Korean patrons’ mission fervour also decreased substantially during that period, which was reflected in the decrease in funding for CBC projects.

Ted as Patron Father

Ted’s position in the father role was accepted during the mission-house stage, and welcomed by CBC students. This patron-client relationship demonstrated that not all power is inherently bad or unfair.

In the case of the CBC, this hierarchical social ranking was observed not only between Ted and the CBC pastors, but also among the CBC pastors themselves, based on the times of their joining the CBC, their ages and gender. However, the Cambodian pastors’ preference for hierarchical relationships between themselves and Ted was also observed. Many of his Cambodian students felt uncomfortable when he approached them as a ‘friend’, and wanted to keep the social distance by calling him ‘teacher’.

In the CBC context, personal commitment was more emphasised during the first two stages. Then from the third stage on, a mutually beneficial exchange was more prominent. Ted functioned as a kind and indulgent father-surrogate figure to the CBC students during the first and second stages.

Many students came when th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Content
• Introduction
• The Patron-Client Relationship
• Aid Dependency
• Ted and the Cambodian Bible College
• Founder as First Order Broker and CBC Pastors as Clients
• Ted as Patron Partner
• Summary
• Back Cover